Trust and bananas
Submitted by jakeytoor
One thing I’m noticing about teaching is that it’s often counter-intuitive.
Here’s one example.
I have a first grade class that I really struggle with classroom-management wise. There are about a dozen factors that contribute to why this might be the case but they are not particularly relevant to this story. For whatever reason, everything feels like a struggle for both the students and myself. That’s the first premise.
The second is that I have been thinking about doing a dance about and with bananas for quite a while now. But I have always shy-ed away from it because I’m worried about the management aspect. I have visions of squished bananas or flying bananas or inappropriate banana play on stage etc. It’s something that I think could be really cool BUT I’m not yet confident in my ability to manage it properly so up until this point I just tabled the idea.
And then I was thinking about it. And thinking about it. And thinking about it. And I realized that that’s usually what happens. Many teacher doesn’t feel confident about their ability to manage so they don’t do the really cool stuff. They don’t even try it. Or they hold it over kids heads like “I want to do something cool with you BUT I don’t know if I can trust you with it….” Same thing happens with field trips or anything out of the ordinary: teachers use it as an incentive and then take it away as “a consequence” or punishment when really, that kid who always get’s the field trips taken away might very well be the one who will benefit most from them. Same with materials. It’s a vicious cycle in which kids “with behavior problems” (which half the time are a result of them being bored or not really engaged in anything that’s meaningful to them) get all the cool stuff taken away which just leads to them feeling angry and more bored and then leads to more “behavior problems.”
So, I though “OK, let’s try this banana dance and see what happens.” I told the students about it and they were very excited. I played Harry Belafonte’s Banana Boat song for them and showed them the first six 8 counts of choreography. I told them that next week I would be bringing in real bananas for us to work with and that it would be very important for us to take good care of these bananas - without adding “otherwise I am going to take them away!” or the ever-patronizing “You have to show me that you can be trusted with bananas.” I just tried to be as straightforward as possible. I said “We are doing a dance with bananas. And we need to take really good care of them because 1) we need them to stay in good condition for our whole rehearsal period and 2) we want to practice looking like professional dancers.
The next week I brought them in and passed them out. For the first time I had every single student’s undivided attention for part for the class, and most student’s attention for most of the class. I spent a good 5 minutes talking to them about bananas and banana protocol- what constitutes proper banana care, what our relationship to the bananas will be on stage, why we are using bananas for the dance, why it’s important for performers to take good care of their props etc. Then I handed them out. We observed our bananas, we smelled them, we looked at them, we noted that bananas have different colors and that you can know if a banana is ripe by looking at it’s color and feeling it’s texture, we shared previous experiences we had with bananas…. We didn’t really have time to do more than that but I realized that this whole banana dance project could easily turn into a whole unit on bananas incorporating science, math, visual art, dance and nutrition.
We rehearsed with our bananas and it was awesome! All except for one of those 1st grade dancers took SUCH GREAT CARE of their bananas! And they listened and had smiles on their faces and danced their hearts out. It was beautiful see.
This illustrated a huge lesson that I am learning on many front this year: when my gut tells me to take away, that’s when it’s time to give - in terms of materials, responsibility, trust, empathy, challenge. I am learning that when I start to get frustrated about students not paying attention / not being respectful / not following my agenda, it’s usually because what I have prepared isn’t engaging or challenging enough for them. If what you are doing is cool and hits the sweet spot of engagement (not too easy and not too difficult) they will be engaged. And if it doesn’t they won’t be engaged. It’s actually very simple.
I have also noticed that when I am struggling with classroom management it’s often a result of not having provided clear enough or explicit enough instruction. Oh, and the last and possibly most important lesson that I have learned is that negativity should be avoided at all costs. Whenever I get negative I’m screwed. It’s like poison in a classroom. It sets up an antagonistic relationship: me against them, and not only is that not good, but it doesn’t work - nothing gets accomplished that way. Ideally, we all want to be on the same team, facing the same direction, looking toward the same goal, with the freedom to accomplish that goal in our own, unique way.
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I love the way jakeytoor reflects on their experience and totally agree with and emphasize the last paragraph of this post. Staying positive and giving explicit instructions does help wonders!
